Canaccord Genuity‘s Mike Walkley today offers his monthly survey of smartphone sales, writing that sales around the world were “seasonally softer” in August as consumers awaited a number of “high-tier” product introductions from Apple (AAPL), Samsung Electronics (005930KS), and others.

Samsung, whose Galaxy S4 was the top selling phone at U.S. carriers Verizon Communcations (VZ), Sprint (S) and T-Mobile USA (TMUS), and number two at AT&T (T), gained share in the month, he believes, and may have used pricing action globally to boost sales:

Further, our analysis indicates Samsung has initiated certain price cuts for the Galaxy S4 late in the June quarter that was maintained through July and August. We believe these price cuts combined with Samsung’s aggressive marketing and effective advertising campaign could further pressure competing high-end smartphones sales. Therefore, we anticipate continued high-end share gains for the Galaxy S4 versus the competition ahead of the iPhone products expected to ship later this month.

Samsung yesterday unveiled the third installment of its over-sized phablet phone, the Galaxy Note 3.

Our global surveys indicated softer mid/low-tier Android smartphone sales from Chinese OEMs due to subsidy shifts and normal August seasonality in China. We believe the softer low/mid-tier Chinese OEM sales combined with Samsung’s aggressive promotions and pricing for its broad low/mid-tier smartphone portfolio led to strong sales and overall market share gains for Samsung in all smartphone market tiers. We believe these market share gains are consistent with Samsung’s strategy to maximize and consolidate smartphone market share ahead of the anticipated September iPhone product launches.

Apple, whose iPhone 5 was still a top-selling device, saw “steady” sales in August, Walkley believes. Apple is expected to unveil new iPhone models at a media event next Tuesday at its headquarters in Cupertino. Walkley is upbeat about prospects for a lower-priced iPhone, which may be among next week’s announcements:

We believe the stronger than we expected iPhone sales during the June quarter due to a much stronger mix of legacy iPhone 4S/4 sales and the continued strong ongoing demand for the more affordable iPhone.

Nokia (NOK), which Monday said it would sell its handset division to Microsoft (MSFT), has seen some gains for its Lumia line of phones running Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system:

Our surveys indicated positive sales rep reviews and decent sales for the Lumia 1020 at AT&T. Further, our surveys indicated positive reviews though modest sales for the entry- level Lumia 521 and high-tier Lumia 925 at T-Mobile. However, our global surveys indicate gradually improving Windows Phone 8 smartphone sales due to strong sales of the Lumia 520 and other mid/low-tier Lumia smartphones. In fact, our surveys indicated solid Lumia 520 sales not only in emerging markets such as Russia and key APAC region countries but also in developed markets such as the UK and the US. We believe the growing Lumia sales, especially in the harder-to-track mid/low-tier smartphone segments, are leading to gradual WP8 smartphone share gains.

Walkley cut estimates for BlackBerry (BBRY) for this year to 24 million units sold from a prior 26.7 million, and cut estimates for 2015 to 20.7 million units form 22.7 million, to reflect what his “checks” suggest continue to be “very soft” sales of the BB10-based Z10, Q10, and Q5 released this year:

Our US August wireless store surveys indicate continued very soft Z10 and Q10 sales at Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Many store representatives we spoke with indicated minimal interest in and sales of the Q10. Given BlackBerry’s installed base of QWERTY handset users, it is surprising how weak sales are for the Q10. In fact, the overall lack of consumer interest in the Q10 appears to have considerably weakened over the past few weeks. In addition, our US surveys indicated minimal consumer interest in and sales of the Z10 smartphone. Further our global surveys indicated weak sales of the more affordable Q5 smartphone and rapidly declining legacy BB7 sales post the BB10 launch and BlackBerry’s announcement to support BBM on competing smartphone platforms. In fact, now that Android and iOS will support BBM, we anticipate a sharp decline in BB7 consumer sales, particularly in emerging markets, as consumers upgrade older BB7 devices to affordable Android smartphones with their BBM networks intact […] Further, our conversations with global distributors indicate high BlackBerry channel inventory levels despite sharp recent ASP declines in the channel for BB10 smartphones. Due to high channel inventory levels combined with very soft sell-through trends, we are lowering our F2014 BlackBerry smartphone sell-in estimates from 26.7M units to 24.1M units and our F2015 estimates from 22.7M to 20.7M units. Please see our separate BlackBerry report published today titled “Updating estimates due to soft BB7 and BB10 smartphone sales and high channel inventory levels” for further details on our BlackBerry thesis. We maintain our SELL rating and $8 price target.

Walkley also cut his estimates for HTC (2498TW) to reflect “continued aggressive pricing from Samsung and other OEMs” and “the likely launch of new iPhone products.”

Walkley now thinks the company will sell 5 million smartphones in the September quarter, down from a prior 6 million-unit estimate, and thinks revenue will come in at $46.9 billion in New Taiwan dollars, below the company’s own forecast for $50 billion to $60 billion.

I’m at the Renaissance Hotel in New York’s Times Square, where Samsung Electronics (005930KS) is expected to unveil a smart watch gadget.

The actual unveiling is apparently taking place in Berlin, during the IFA consumer electronics show taking place this week. Samsung has reserved a section of New York’s Times Square to live stream the proceedings, with a giant white booth set up next to the TKTS booth. A decent crowd has gathered down below in front of that booth’s giant screen.

The smart watch has been a hot topic this year, with expectations both Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) will offer their own wares at some point.

Gregory Lee, the newly installed president of Samsung Telecom Americas, takes the stage. He tells us the New York-Berlin simulcast will debut both the “Galaxy Note III” smartphone, which he calls the “best large-screen smartphone,” as well as “Galaxy Gear,” which is presumably the watch gadget.

Down below, at the booth, an announcer is whooping up the crowd with a promise of a stupendous “Samsung Reveal.” He asks the crowd is they have any idea what’s being unveiled. Not much from the crowd. But he offers them some “very special guests across the globe,” and asks the assembled, “Are ya feelin’ alright?!” And the special guest is … Icona Pop! They take the stage to sing.

After a few songs by the band, the feed from Berlin starts and we are offered … A live orchestra playing a classical piece, though I’m afraid I can’t name the piece.

A British chap in hilarious giant white glasses and a loud suit, bearing a strong resemblance to Paul Shaffer of the Tonight Show band, named Jason is the MC in Berlin.

He introduces J.K. Shin, head of the mobile devices effort at Samsung. Shin says the company has listened to what “you” want, including more options and a larger screen. The new Galaxy Note, number 3, is “slimmer, lighter, longer, larger, faster,” he says. Shin says the company has made changes to the included “S Pen” stylus used with the phablet, and more “powerful” multitasking. He mentions the enhanced long-term evolution, or LTE, functionality, “category 4.”

The phone apparently can play back ultra-hi def video, or “4k,” as it’s known in the industry. It comes with 3 gigabytes of DRAM, which should help with that task.

… Tonight Show band leader Paul Shaffer.

Shin, brushes his jacket cuff aside to reveal a watch. “This is Samsung Galaxy Gear,” he says, to applause. It has a 1.63-inch color display, and the strap includes a camera.

Shin talks up features such as receiving text message alerts on the screen, features familiar from some other smart watches such as the Pebble, and says it will bring “Smart Freedom.” It also runs numerous apps, including eBay (EBAY) shopping and the Path social networking program.

It gets more than a day’s operation on a charge.

The watch will be backward-compatible with the Galaxy S 4 smartphone introduced this past spring.

But wait, there’s one more thing!

Shin says there will be a new version of the company’s 10-inch tablet, Galaxy Note 10.1.

Galaxy Note 3 and Gear will be available September 25th, he says. That date is a “global launch,” as Samsung calls it, in 125 countries. No specific dates were offered for the U.S. market. Further details are forthcoming. No pricing was announced.

The Galaxy Note 3 can split the screen between two running apps, such as an email composition window and the photos gallery.

After the presentation, there was a demo area at the Renaissance, where camera crews jousted to get a shot of the devices, especially the Gear watch, which Samsung reps where wearing on their wrists. If you’re interested, you can also go to the kiosk in Times Square to see the products yourself.

I had a chance to fiddle with the Galaxy Note 3 for a brief while. There is certainly a lot going on. Pressing the button on the S Pen stylus brings up a small semi-circular menu on screen. It offers several options, including search and the ability to write a note on the screen. It takes some getting used to, to be able to grasp the pen, press the button, and navigate to the on-screen icon for the function one wants.

The Note 3 also features a sliding drawer on the left of the screen that allows for the selection of another app that can be made to share the screen with whatever one was already doing. My sense is that one should be able to drag-and-drop objects between the two panes of this split window, though it wasn’t entirely successful, though it’s possible I was simply doing something wrong. I tried composing an email in the top pane of the window while browsing photos in the Gallery application in the bottom pane. It was all very smooth, which was a delight. However, I expected to be able to drag a photo out of the Gallery and into the email composition window. I wasn’t able to do so, which seems a shame, as it would be a most useful feature. Again, it is possible I hadn’t found the right approach.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Sue late today joined the crowd assessing Samsung Electronics‘s (005930KS) Q2report this morning, Seoul time, which offered revenue and operating profit consistent with a pre-announcement on July 5th, but net income that missed some analysts’ estimates.

Like those other analysts, Sue sees prices coming down for Samsung and others. Unlike those other analysts, he thinks there will be diminishing profit returns from higher investment.

Sue, who follows wireless chip maker Qualcomm (QCOM), a supplier to both Samsung and Apple (AAPL), and rates its stock a Buy, thinks the quarter showed that while there’s lots of money left to make in smartphones, it’s costing incrementally more to do so:

Samsung Electronics reported revenues of KRW57.5 trillion (+9% QoQ) slightly above the guidance of KRW57 trillion with mobile revenues up +9% QoQ, but mobile operating profits of KRW6.3 trillion declined -3% QoQ. We believe the operating profit decline may be driven largely by the increased R&D and sales/marketing related expenses, a theme echoed by all the other major smartphone makers. Samsung continues to lead the global smartphone market and is benefiting from its broad portfolio of smartphones from the high-end to the entry level, it’s just taking incrementally more in cost to push each unit.

The market faces the “the deflationary impact of technology with consumers unwilling to spend more for the higher iterative levels of innovation,” which is causing the heightened expense to lure buyers to the pricier wares. That view echoes remarks yesterday by Citigroup, although Sue is not quite as pessimistic.

The emerging markets, such as China, where the highest growth is, increasingly is opting for “mid-tier” and “low-tier” inexpensive phones. That view is supported by data released last night by Strategy Analytics and IDC regarding Q2 smartphone sales. The data show a jump in sales by companies not known for premium models, such as ZTE (0763HK). IDC analyst Ramon Llamas remarked “Lower-priced smartphones continue to gain traction.”

Samsung has in fact said, he writes, that its average selling price will decline “somewhat” this quarter, “given the transition to the increasing contribution of mid-tier smartphones.”

The market’s still “healthy,” he concludes, with shipments perhaps rising 26% to 870 million. Samsung may see its sales rise faster than the market, at perhaps 34%, thanks to the forthcoming “Galaxy Note III” and other models.

About Tech Trader Daily

Tech Trader Daily is a blog on technology investing written by Barron’s veteran Tiernan Ray. The blog provides news, analysis and original reporting on events important to investors in software, hardware, the Internet, telecommunications and related fields. Comments and tips can be sent to: techtraderdaily@barrons.com.